TomJ
Contributing Member
I wanted to post my Fed Ex shipping experience so hopefully no one else experiences this. I ordered powder and primers online and was not going to be able to take a day off of work to wait for the shipment. In Illinois they need to be shipped to the address on your FOID or held by the shipper for pick up. I opted to have Fed Ex hold it and called them to ask which of their locations I should have it shipped to. I was explicit in explaining what was being shipped and that they were hazmat materials, and they gave me the address of a local location that could hold hazmat shipments. My package wound up bouncing around for 3 days, as that location could only hold a hazmat package if it was shipped Express, not Ground so they refused delivery of it twice. No one told me of this requirement. I figured out what was going on the day of their third delivery attempt and had them re-route it to another location.
The misinformation I received from Fed Ex was disappointing. I spoke with customer service reps, reps from local offices, managers and supervisors and received different answers from all of them. What I learned was you need to specify what's being shipped, how it's being shipped (Ground, Express, etc) and whether the location you want it shipped to will hold it for you based on these combinations. I'm not sure if UPS is better, and if anyone has had better experiences with them I'd like to know so I can avoid this next time as I wasted too much time on this.
The misinformation I received from Fed Ex was disappointing. I spoke with customer service reps, reps from local offices, managers and supervisors and received different answers from all of them. What I learned was you need to specify what's being shipped, how it's being shipped (Ground, Express, etc) and whether the location you want it shipped to will hold it for you based on these combinations. I'm not sure if UPS is better, and if anyone has had better experiences with them I'd like to know so I can avoid this next time as I wasted too much time on this.